Archive for dad

By the spring of 1995 I was ready to be social again. I took these brand new wings that had sprouted in the tender care of all my new friends and began spreading my branches out to those who were offering friendship. All those days and nights roll into one in the shadowy recesses of my memories but they are remembered with a fondness of a time that will never be again. I moved from the apartment in one suburb to another apartment in another suburb. This apartment had many perks. It was in a complex right downtown and situated in a perfect spot for a very social place. It was behind a 24 hour eatery and everything was just around the corner. The supermarket, the movie duplex and the mall. It may have seemed like a completely different life as the apartment and job I had been living in. But that apartment still had somewhat of a dark cloud hanging above it. The previous apartment had been a studio where I was living with a roommate. She would sleep on the couch and where my bedroom was, the wall only went up about 3/4 to the cieling. I could get up on my tiptoes and peer over the wall to see what my roomie was doing. That didn’t leave much to the imagination when we had guys over, but it worked until it was time for me to move off to be on my own.In spring of 1994 I was working as a cashier at the local grocery store, but the job didn’t last very long. WEll to be honest, it was me who didn’t last long IN the job. I wasn’t happy and decided to do pizza delivery instead. Little did I know, but I was slowly building up debt because I wasn’t paying attention to my budget, well really ANY budget. I was working every now and then, making cash from tips and a small paycheck every other week but it was not enough to pay the bills. Luckily I was one of those smarter college students and hadn’t opened up a credit card at this point, but I had forgotten to pay the rent. Oh, and lights,tv, radio, heat and stove?? They also were bills that needed to be paid that weren’t getting paid. I’m not sure if it was a matter of me doing it on purpose, or by accident. I was one of those kids lucky enough to get just about anything I wanted while I was growing up. While I didn’t have a brand new BMW like some of my classmates, I was lucky enough to get a car when I turned 16. I didn’t know that it was a different world outside my suburb. I thought that everyone had the same amount of money, dishes got washed on their own, and bills, well, I could always call mom right?

My father passed away in June of 1995, and I found myself with a large chunk of change in the bank a few months after he passed on. He committed suicide, which usually means no insurance payout to the surviving family members. One warm August afternoon, when I trampled down the stairway to the main floor where the mailboxes where, I didn’t know what I was about to find in my mailbox. I had no idea that inside that skinny, silver box with a keyhole was something that would change my path in life forever. Of course What they didn’t know, and possibly couldn’t have known, that giving a 21 year old that much money and a checkbook was just asking for trouble. In my case it would end up being excitement, adventure AND trouble.